Excellent but underrated film

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

The Universal International Pictures release "Six Black Horses" is a predictable, low-budget, but entertaining horse opera with Audie Murphy, Joan O'Brien, and Dan Duryea. Harry Keller directed this largely standard-issue sagebrusher with an even, assured hand. This 80-minute Murphy vehicle was his last western. He got his start helming westerns, and he helmed "Seven Ways to Sundown" (1960) with Murphy. Keller keeps the action moving along at an amiable gait between bouts of expository dialogue. Our two heroes encounter savage Indians, bushwhacking sidewinders, and a deceiving dame. Nothing truly surprising happens, but the two lead characters make an interesting combo, and they encounter their share of tribulation. "Seven Men From Now" scenarist Burt Kennedy's screenplay features masculine dialogue enhanced by the mysterious heroine's agenda. As other reviewers have complained, Kennedy recycles scenes from "Ride Lonesome and anticipates a cockfighting scene in "Return of the Seven." Ben Lane (Audie Murphy of "Hell Bent for Leather") and Frank Jesse (Dan Duryea of "Winchester '73") join forces not long after the opening credits. Duryea delivers another of his charmingly roguish performances as a sympathetic bad guy. Set afoot by a lame horse, Ben trudges through the wilderness, toting his saddle, and spots a string of horse. He ropes himself a horse and learns to his chagrin later that the string of horses belong to a Mustanger (Roy Barcroft of "Arizona Manhunt") and his cohorts. Poor Ben winds up with his head in a noose when Frank intervenes on his behalf. Our heroes meet an enigmatic woman, Kelly (Joan O'Brien of "Operation Petticoat"), who offers them $500 a piece to escort her back to her husband in Santa Rita del Cobre. Before long we learn that Kelly wants to see Frank dead because he killed her husband. During an Indian attack, she comes close to shooting Frank, but a spear her in the shoulder complicates things for the lady. This is the kind of western where the action takes place on the trail. Inevitably, Ben and Frank have a falling out and slap leather. Despite Kennedy's derivative screenplay, "Six Black Horses" qualifies an enjoyable frontier tale that doesn't wear out its welcome.

Great western, I enjoyed Audie Murphy's performance.At 38 minutes into the movie there is a story told by Frank about a past love in Bisbee who he later discovered was married to another man. He says it taught him a lesson, "Always check the brand to make sure you are not driving another man's stock". That same story is told 50 minutes into Fort Dobbs (1958) by Clett (Brian Keith) and he says "Always check the brand first and that way you'll know if you are running somebody else's' stock".Burt Kennedy (story)was a writer in both movies so he got a lot of use of this tale!

For two-thirds of this film I thought it was pretty good, but I ended up feeling that it had disappointed.It did seem improbable that a very attractive woman would risk a very dangerous journey with two wanderers she didn't know, but that's Hollywood for you. It seemed a very foolhardy way of seeking revenge, and, like another reviewer, I couldn't work out what she was trying to achieve by building up the fire so that it smoked. And from her knowing smirk it was she who had loosened a horse's shoe to delay the journey. And she chose a darned funny time to try to get her revenge, during the fight in the old mission, when the trio was already out-numbered.A nod of approval to the script-writer for putting into context the $1,000 that Kelly was offering to Ben and to Frank - three or four years' pay. But a big frown for the improbable long-distance effectiveness of Ben's revolver. (I wonder what Audie Murphy, with his WWII experience of fire-arms, thought of that.) I'm not sure what was achieved by including the dog, except to show that Ben was kind to ill-treated animals. During the chases, it looked fixed improbably securely to the pack-horse saddle.And the ending was an anti-climax.

There is no comparison between the westerns Murphy did in the fifties with those made in the sixties. Six Black Horses has the excellent Dan Duryea and the interesting Joan O'Brien but the great outdoor action scenes of films like `The Kansas Raiders', `The Cimarron Kid' or `Duel at Silver Creek' are missing. Duryea is a hired killer who saves Murphy's life and Joan O'Brien the woman who hires them both to take her to a town which is very hard to reach because of the `Coyoteros'. Duryea's character has the peculiar name of Frank Jesse, his mother must have been an admirer of the James Brothers. Bob Steele who was the main actor in so many C Westerns shows up briefly at the beginning. Duryea, in spite of being a hired killer, is such a likeable character with good feelings in relation to Murphy that you keep wishing there will be no showdown between them.